36 of 38: American towns voted on data centres, and the answer came in megawatts

On Tuesday, while the country chose a Congress, dozens of American towns answered a narrower question: do we want a data centre here? According to a tally of county and municipal returns by the trade site American Buildout, 36 of 38 counted local measures went against development, including 21 binding restrictions and 15 bans, across ten states¹. All 13 measures that would have advanced development were rejected¹. The results are unofficial¹.

The detail matters more than the headline. These were not votes against computing; they were votes on thresholds. Six Ohio bans target facilities above 25 megawatts; Emporia and El Dorado in Kansas define “high-impact” at 10 megawatts; Wells in Maine regulates sites with at least 100,000 square feet of data-centre floor¹. In Perry, Ohio, 87.1% backed a rule that developers seeking tax abatements or special-tax deals must post financial guarantees¹. Grove City, Ohio, and Janesville, Wisconsin, now require a public vote on large projects, at 54.6% and 62.8%¹.

Some margins were wide. Hubbard, Ohio, approved its ban 2,622 to 802; Granville’s charter amendment drew 82.4%¹. In Joliet Township, Illinois, 78.9% voted no on whether the city council should approve AI data centres¹. Just The News, citing the Washington Post, put the backdrop in one line: seven in ten Americans oppose new data-centre construction in their own communities, according to a Post–ABC–Ipsos poll last month².

Read it calmly. A vote on megawatts, water and tax deals is the planning system working, not a moral panic. Developers now know where the lines are and what a community wants in return: guarantees, limits, a say. That is slower than a press release about gigawatts, and sturdier. For you, the lesson travels to Europe: much of the AI build-out is settled not in keynotes but in council chambers and grid-connection queues.